BBCSH 'Hush'
by tigersilver
Summary: First season and subsequent epi spoilers; AU, Fixit-fic, obligatory. John's a spider; Sherlock's counting. And there's no body, is there, John?


Right, I was doing something whilst doing other things, I was. Here goes:

Title: 'Hush'  
>Pairing: SJ  
>Rating: PG-13<br>Word Count: 3,800  
>WarningsSummary: I've not seen the show past 'The Great Game'; this is all absolutely incorrect twaddle and I know it, especially when it comes to canon events and the whole Sherlockian universe. It's also influenced (I'm certain) by the three hundred odd fanfics I've just devoured. So...it's probably fairly awful and riddled with mistakes and of course it's not beta'd because I don't have a beta for this fandom. What it is, though, is the first gush of words for the next binge and you'll forgive me for wishing to share them...I hope. Carry on, then. Try not to flame me too badly: 

**BBCSH 'Hush'**

Sherlock Holmes, at age thirteen, three months, seven days, had run off to the circus. He took up a position amongst the clown corps, feeling the opps for much-needed disguise were best there.

He was a natural, needless to say.

His parents allowed him it, the indulgence, though Mycroft was hauled summarily out of his prestigious public school for two weeks 'emergency family leave' and sent along as well, ostensibly to understudy the lion-taming major domo. It was a fiasco; it was a massive concession to the fading days of his somewhat troubled boyhood; Sherlock knew it, and loved his Mummy all the more for it-even Papa-though he cursed Mycroft roundly and at length for allowing himself to be dragged in to meddle. He'd been perfectly well on his own, hadn't he?

He learnt some very useful things there, especially when the acrobats—Russian and Chinese extraction, intermarried and tight-as-houses, old families going way back in the business; take it as read—took him up. He was giraffe-tall, bony with knobs at wrist and ankle, and quite terribly spry. He learnt how to swing out high and wide over a gaping audience for the most powerful effect, the proper way to leap-whilst-twisting-falling-tumbling, and how to dislocate his own bones and go blissfully limp when in a long descent, like a drunkard. Or a hawk, perchance. Protect his skull, cushion his spleen, guard all the most vulnerable parts of him. All useful, functional skills, undeleted.

Sherlock Holmes in addition developed lightning-rapid texting thumbs when the opportunity for that arose and then of course the ability to slow down actual time by force of sheer will and in-bred brilliance.

When he slammed into the pavers there was blood for verisimilitude and he recalled precisely how to twitch himself unobtrusively into position. He was already pale enough and the slim vial of pig's blood stashed in his greatcoat pocket was fortuitous in the extreme. He'd snapped the glass tube and smeared it midair and ever so discreetly. Now was his chance and now he would seize it. Caveat emptor; carpe diem. He began his final countdown as soon as the uniformed men closed in and quietly put the party trick he knew concerning the flexibility of the human pulse into good use promptly.

Molly was immensely efficient; expected.

Lestrade amenable in private; minimal persuasion.

Mycroft grudging—Mummy wouldn't like it; Papa less—but willing enough to take the spoils, after.

And John. John was not to know.

John was to be left out of it. Well, well out of it.

John stayed on at Baker Street, after. Naturally. Of course. Wasn't budging. No body, was there? No _body_, no proof. Blood, yes. But…non habeaus corpus. Telling.

Oh, there'd certainly _been_ a body once but then there wasn't one, either, after; not one he could poke at professionally, not one he could accept with his many senses, exhume or perhaps shoot a few frustrated rounds into with his gun when his perfectly understandable frustration levels peaked, as they did, often. Being John, he didn't, though. Didn't even voice the urge, in the shower. Restrained himself mightily, he did. Didn't fuss. Sherlock was impossible and improbable on his best days. In the absence of evidence to the contrary (see aforementioned non-body), Sherlock lived on, ergo, ipso facto, for no doubt idiotic reasons of his own.

John might not be able to sort exactly how he'd done it, the bugger, but he'd no doubt Sherlock _could_.

…Which was not to say John didn't _feel_. He _felt_ and he _grieved_ and Mrs Hudson was _twittery_ and _sympathetic _and Inspector Lestrade and Sarah and Harry and the whole bloody crew of well-wishers (Mycroft, too, in his own odd manner and wasn't that one for the books, eh? Fool)_ hovered_ a bit and made _appropriate noises_.

Bother_ that_.

John—being John—didn't budge from 221B. Didn't even begin to consider it. He was counseled he should, gently advised, even urged; he ignored all advice, even Mrs Hudson's and (of course) Harry's. Sherlock had mentioned to him ages ago that criminals much favoured returning to the scenes of their foul deeds when they could or were able (when they felt safe enough to do so, perhaps, or could no longer suppress the urge to gloat or check up on their leavings) and thus John _did_. Not. Budge.

Well, at first he couldn't, being hammered by sheer shock. Grief, anger, betrayal—denial. But after…after was different. Then he could choose, couldn't he?

To _stay_. Bugger them all, he was staying.

Perfectly adequate flat, no sense moving; all his things were there. End story.

Eventually, Mycroft paid the entire rent for a full year forward. Quietly, discreetly, not even kidnapping John to induce gratitude, and that was but one more sign in a slew of them Sherlock—bloody closed-mouth sodding bastard of a selfish beast—lived. Elsewhere, yes, but lived. If he'd been asked to list the hard evidence to support his hunch, though—if Sherlock were there to put him on the spot—he'd not have much really to account for and recite back, hands properly clasped behind his back. Vague things, odd things, things that panged his gut and that was pretty much what there was to it. Just a hunch, just a feel.

Far too much _feel_, actually, and for that he cursed the younger Holmes brother roundly. In the dark of the night or after a double shift at clinic or over a pint with mates or when eating stir-fried rice…by himself. Lonesome.

Stag again, wouldn't you know? Bloody! And John hated it. Hated, hated, despised._ Abhorred_. He'd not signed up for this end when shooting that cabbie; Sherlock had betrayed him, undeniably. But what could be done—what_ could_? Bloody, bloody Sherlock. He'd no idea even where to begin looking, did he?

Well. He did, but he wasn't. Rolled his stiff neck, swallowed bile, hunkered down and started watching. Observing, more like.

Mrs Hudon sympathized; Mycroft left him be; Sarah patted his shoulder now and again, smiling sadly. Harry wouldn't and didn't do any of those things but she did keep a much closer tab on him.

And John set his jaw and his shoulders and his spine, all cast in concrete—no. Harder than that; try diamond or Damascus steel—and endured. Grew accustomed to living like a pent-up spring, awaiting action. Done with grieving though; no use, was it?

Twenty-four hours, two days, then three-punctuated by a quiet service, family only, high churchy—five days, a fortnight—a month on. Two.

Stupid filthy Sherlock. John would give him a bit, just a bit longer, and then he would take matters up in his own hands.

At age fourteen, three months, ten days Sherlock had learnt to wank. Beat his meat, massage his knob, get it on and conversely, contrarily—curse the English language; so imprecise!-bring it off. With only himself present at first—boring!—and then later with others—eventually _more _boring, oddly. No, not. At age nineteen, pubescence mostly complete, he gave it up as a bad job all round. Ignored it, pretty much, in favour of other, less boring activities, the ingestion of cocaine included.

With the inclusion of a short sandy-haired nondescript ex-Army surgeon in his life a solid decade plus some later, Sherlock returned to this primary skill-set abruptly. Same night as meeting the bloke, actually, and not with any real degree of happy satisfaction. Fact was, he resented it, heartily.

Nonetheless, John Watson provoked this activity, simply by inhaling and exhaling regularly in the same space as Sherlock. John Watson, for all his oatmeal-coloured staidness and calm demeanour, left Sherlock more often breathless than not as a rule.

Reeling. Erect. It became quite a chore to hide it.

His violin became a constant companion; he spent a great deal of time engaged in boxing and the martial arts, consequently. Thanked a kind fate for the increase in running his latest cases seemed to require None of this proved much good at deflecting his burgeoning libido in the larger picture but the resultant exhaustion did allow him at some sleep when otherwise he'd be wanking.

Sherlock—when fantasizing—learnt to bite his favoured pillow nearly through. It was vastly uncomfortable (faugh! feathers!) and took away from the overall feeling of slight relief after but the good doctor's hearing was keen and needs must.

One month to two, two to four. Six. John was time traveller. Bits-and-pieces piling up to convince him to hold on just a little longer and John did do, albeit grudgingly.

Months on end. Being vague, being formless, having little or no real direction. John let them. He'd another hunch about that part and it was clear from the lack of Mycroft's overt meddling in his daily life this _was_ the approved course of action.

Which set John's teeth on edge. He'd no wish to oblige Mycroft…but he'd no wish to disoblige the world's only surviving consulting detective either.

John stayed his hand and hedged all comers as to his plans for the future. Dug in.

Except…Mycroft had also informed him rather offhandedly—by terse text, via not-Anthea—when an ex-Army officer had turned up nicely dead on the docks at Southwark, apparently suicide. Moran was the gent's name, Sebastian. Inveterate gambler, he, and the case open-and-shut. Death by debt. This, popping up on his cell precisely a fortnight to the day after Sherlock 'died'.

Sporting of him, what? Sending John messages.

And the homeless network took the best care to inform him—cryptically, cryptographically, and by way of a filthy hand-scrawled note pressed into his hand as he exited a taxi—when two enormous narcotics rings and one attached prostitution establishment (the last being staffed by the very much underaged , poor souls; dreadful) based in the greater Metro area were all in process of police infiltration, with an eye towards a major shakedown. After a night spent decoding the scrawl (aided by a series of warming half-drunk lagers and only thanks to one of Sherlock's many encyclopedic tomes, last shelf down, _not _dusty, spine cracked and well used), he was not at all surprised when Lestrade called in days later. No, not at all, though he managed a fair job looking it—curious, interested, uninformed—as the detective wittered on about this, that and the other—gossip, all of it, and for no good reason. Narc wasn't Homicide and so why, anyway? Lestrade eyed him sideways all through. John's expertise was naturally not in covert ops, no; why would Greg ever think he would care, then? The entire conversation was a non-starter. Blast sodding bloody Sherlock for _that_, too; John was no actor.

No _body_, _no_ body, **no **_**body**_: new mantra.

John went to work, John went down the pub, John had dinner with Harriet, John drank copious amounts of tea.

But…he rather thought he was managing, keeping up the act. Lestrade had left him that day with a spring to his step, mission accomplished. John restrained himself from vindictively damaging the Strad's case after by tossing it out the open window—barely.

The _Guardian_ informed him obliquely that in Switzerland several high-ranking banking officials were discovered in a closeted conference room, all brutally murdered most foul by infusion of poison gas. Mustard, in the duct works. Interpol was of course involved but there was no conclusion as to why they'd been done in or by whom. No suspects, scant evidence, no motive, apparently. Case cold even fresh.

Bodies, five. None of them the right one. John snarled and binned all of Sherlock's vast and well-loved chemistry set in retaliation. It would have served the idiot right to have miscalculated; John in an excess of Watson temper briefly wished him really truly extinct.

'Course, he then went and retrieved it, washed it carefully, boxed it up, stored it away in the closet. Cursing blue streaks all the while.

Bloody Sherlock. Not fair. And certainly he didn't wish him dead; how would he ever manage to strangle the git when he deigned to show his face again, then?

Things accumulated. Things, facts, stories, tidbits and rumours. Like mould spores, on the surface of a petri dish.

Harry—who cared about these things, what with real estate being her bread-and-butter—told him over dinner one evening that in America, on Wall Street, a holding corporation heavily invested in both huge commercial rental properties and the global arms trade had gone down in a firestorm of internal flames—embezzlement, tax fraud, sex scandal, the like—and taking along sundry smaller associated franchises with it. John nodded, hemmed and hawed and didn't much care.

In a matter of months the ramifications of the massive Wall Street fail were felt elsewhere: a media giant in the UK foundered; a start-up software shop in Bolivia with squidgy connections to Japan sunk without a trace; a small-time plastics-manufacturer in China, specializing in plastic explosives, exploded, appropriately enough. How real estate was integral or even involved in that sordid mess John didn't know or much care but then…then, there was no body in the casket Mycroft had had buried with so much dignified state, was there? And Sherlock was wily as goats, the bastarding arse.

No body. No _body_, the arse. Just slightly less the requisite amount of blood on the pavement he'd surveyed (tearfully, alright? And what did that matter?) and the photos of a somewhat awkwardly splayed ex-consulting detective splashed in the papers, that one particular edition.

'Survived by his loving…' read the obit. 'Recently called into question...' John was not mentioned, naturally.

John hung on. Not budging. Grimly _not_ budging. Was he not sitting at the centre of the real crime scene, then? As the other hadn't been, naturally. The rooftop had been a stage set and Sherlock an actor, skilled at ad-libbing.

John would've liked to know whom else Sherlock had contacted before him. Dearly.

For all that Sherlock claimed no close relationships, he'd any number of them, really, notched on his metaphorical walking stick. He was…not-mates with Lestrade, for instance, and for all practical purposes one of the close-knit crew of fools the CI kept about him; Mycroft and he were fond in their own way, which pleased Mummy. Mummy, of course. But others, too. Accumulated much in the same way he'd accumulated all the items that littered 221B Baker Street.

John. Always and ever John, but John was in London and Sherlock was presently in Taiwan, en route elsewhere.

Sherlock, being brilliant and knowing full well he was brilliant, also had known without even thinking about it Molly would acquiesce, Mrs Hudson would see the necessity, Lestrade would play along, Mycroft would pull strings and—eventually—John would forgive.

Sherlock knew, too, as a matter of course, how to dislocate his thumbs, his shoulders and that he was double-jointed, which was frightfully useful and not something John had ever caught onto, either. He did not, however, know how to dislocate his heart and that was the trouble. He'd never been called upon to perform that sort of acrobatic exercise prior; it was no wonder he couldn't, even by being willfully, consciously brilliant over it.

Sherlock counted instead, as a method of occupying the hours away—he counted, for example, Moran, at the two week marker. Simple enough to come up behind outside the warehouse, use that one pressure point to great effectiveness, arrange the git's gun appropriately and employ a gloved finger to help pull the trigger. That was one marker down, on the long road back home.

And nearly every week another odd story surfacing.

Not confined to the public arena, either. John cursed: this muddy sea of stirred muck lapped at his toes, rather, eddying round the home front.

Mrs Hudson toddling off to Spain for a week's holiday, not three months after Sherlock's mockery of a funeral service. Entirely unlike her, that. Courtesy her well-off son-in-law, when John had never even known she and the deceased Mr. Hudson had sprung for children or any sort, much less a married daughter and three lovely grandchildren. When she returned she was nicely pink, clutching two bottles of duty-free sherry for sharing and cheery enough, but John had since grown into and fondly nurtured his darkling suspicions.

Then, too.

Molly Hooper resigned her position. Abruptly. Within 72 hours of Sherlock's 'death'. And bloody well 'disappeared'. This last caused John some degree of disquiet internally; however….if Sherlock had ever had a fondness for Molly like that, John was fairly sure he'd have had known of it sooner.

Oh, yes. Definitely. But that was not all.

Mike Stamford relocated to Edinburgh, taking up an offered directorship. This at the six month mark post-Sherlock not-dying; no real warning Mike was contemplating exiting St. Bart's for purportedly greener pastures before, either. John extended his congrats like a trooper and rolled the information around in his brain, pondering. Why Edinburgh, anyway?

Who was in Edinburgh? Or...perhaps the question was more...who was no longer?

It surprised him not at all he was offered Mike's position. He accepted it anyway and tried very faithfully indeed not to dwell on meaningless acts of charity from low-level government officials. Gainfully employed, he was now less at 221B than ever before. Excepting when not—he purchased a new sofa to replace the one Sherlock had worn into Sherlock-shaped grooves and consigned the old one to Sherlock's bedroom.

Sally Donovan transferred to Birmingham Metro, on the excuse her elderly parents required her presence nearby and she owed them. This, seven months to the damned day of Sherlock's departure from the great mortal coil. John winced over that—_really, Sherlock_? He murmured internally. He noticed Anderson followed, though. Three months after, to the sodding day. Really, Greg?

There was a series of minor arrests here and there in London and environs, a smattering of car bombings abroad, petty crime generally and no really interesting homicides to speak of.

Then there was nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Radio silence, black-out, and John was going quietly mad for the last leg of it, that final five months. He_ was_. And if Sherlock weren't 'dead' already, John would've happily throttled him. Except of course he. Would. Not.

_Said the spider to the fly_—or perhaps it was the _other_ spider—'come a wee bit closer, my dear, so I may eat you.' _Wrap you, entrap you and beguile you with invisible wires_.

John did not budge. He didn't have to: the criminal in the majority of cases always returned to the scene of his crime, yes? And JOhn was owed justice in the very worst way.

Sherlock Holmes had had more than enough of counting anything (bodies, plots, casualties of war) by the end of 365 days, two hours, ten minutes. He made tea in the familiar old kettle—what? Had John _really_ believed he was incapable?—and reclined upon his own comfy divan and waited impatiently for John to awake and dutifully investigate, his cooling cuppa gracefully balanced on his thin-skinned sternum.

Catalogued the dead and the disgraced and the imprisoned and calculated that in precisely two minutes, forty-five seconds John Watson would creep down the staircase with his revolver in hand, cocked and primed.

The object was_ not_ to shock John into accidently murdering him in his own home, upon his own comfortably familiar sofa. (Wair, what?) Sherlock didn't think John would do but it paid to be at least a little cautious. It had been 8,767 hours, more or less, after all. John was only human; he'd pushed his faithful blogger rather into an uncharted area recently and John would likely be quite tetchy with him.

On second thought…

He dropped the tea cup deliberately, from a height. Waited.

John heard the disturbance—Sherlock cursed softly ans succinctly when he discovered the kitchen cupboards emptied of his precious scientific glassware upon first arrival, rummaging about for the PG Tips—and though the twat was catlike quiet as befitted a surviving consulting detective, water did hiss a bit went it boiled. He sat up slowly, blinking, thought first and momentarily of his trusty pistol and then decided—regretfully—that _no_. He'd not clip Sherlock in the wing, the bloody bastard. Not even if he more than deserved it.

With a nasty grin at his ceiling—cracked and really, Mrs Hudson should engage a plasterer; the rent more than covered it-he lay down again, turned sideways with a hard-learnt quiet control and trained strained eyes upon his bedroom door, resolutely cracked a bare two inches open for general surveillance purposes. Two could play, couldn't they?

On the count of four hundred and thirty-three, a number that was as meaningless as the breaths he took between each beat and the symphonic melody he sang himself silently to excuse the inevitable boredom of yet more counting, Sherlock sprang up from _their new sofa_ (Bloody John!) and dropped his greatcoat in the remains of tea and cup. Oozed his way up the steps—don't tread on two or seven if one means to be silent—and arrived at John's bedroom door frowning blackly in the intermittent gloom of a London evening. John of course knew he was in residence again; how could he not? He'd the training of Master Watson directly, yes? No room then for error or sloppiness of observation; John was wakeful and knew he was there. He'd eat his own scarf if John was really unaware of him; no—he'd eat his own cooking, which would be infinitely a worse punishment.

…Excepting. What if John _were_ more the type to retain grudges?

Sherlock paused. Actually paused.

He did rather deserve it, didn't he? If John had been the one to orchestrate the 8,000 hours plus lag in life's daily business Sherlock would've been absolutely called upon to flay him alive after—exquisitely, surgically, precisely so-with the sharp edge of his long tongue and then roast the remains of his compact, calm, staid beige person-of-interest over a roaring bonfire built of spite, flaming jealous anger and cold calculated vengeance. To a perfect 'T'.

Bargaining; he was bloody _bargaining_.

Sherlock couldn't even contemplate _acceptance_.

John grinned gleefully at the shadows, vastly pleased. Now there was a body, finally. 'Observe my methods, John' and all that rot. The tallest shadow of them all one wavered a bit and the ancient bones of the house creaked in ready sympathy. His face creaked in sympathy, too. It had been centuries since he'd smiled in this way, hadn't it? Epochs.

It was quiet enough he could almost hear Mrs Hudson breathing; certainly he could ascertain exactly the moment Sherlock took in a hard gulp of stale flat air and held it, white throat flexing ghostly.

A long pale hand hovered over the worn knob, not quite touching it. Not quite, but severely tempted.

John grinned, daft as houses, but hushed within himself as an empty mortuary tomb with it. His tongue didn't even tap his front teeth, he was so silent. As a tomb, empty of its rightful owner. Two could play a waiting game, always. And…

Served him bloody well right, the bastard. Served him right.

Trick was to overwhelm the opponent. To _not_ telegraph next steps, to _not_ give oneself away easily. To stay coolly aware and be observant; loose, relaxed and in the flow of it. One could not accede to raw emotionality nor allow any cracks to develop into demeaning fissures. That wasy lay ruin, utter.

Sherlock would not sob nor click his back teeth together in a frustrated snap. He would not hesitate. He would leap boldly forward and bowl John Watson over bodily. It would be just as successful as before had been for him—the results had already been well tabulated and told over a thousand times—and he_ would_ have what he most wanted-and-desired and John would never know what hit him…and—and.

Trick was to not budge, not even for instant. To wait it out, just as on surveillance.

Heart was an unsteady organ, thumping away; Sherlock wondered why it was it had behaved so well mid-flight and now betrayed him like the veriest turncoat at the sight of a familiar doorknob. Noise—all this was but random noise in his head, cacophony; unnecessary, and John would no doubt be quite aware he was hesitating. He never hesitated—_never_.

Ah. Well, not quite factual, that.

He'd understood Molly's collection of sad sighs for the first time, that day, hours after. Fully. And Mycroft's irksome bullying and Mycroft's sweet tooth. And Mummy's odd expression whenever he showed up at home again, bad pence.

He even understood why his father had passed away of a cardiac attack. Even though Mummy always spoke of him as if he were still present.

Made of sterner stuff, Sherlock was. Had pushed on, counting down internally, nonetheless. Amsterdam, Geneva, Beirut, Lisbon, Dover's lovely cliff—how droll; had Moriarity fancied himself a pirate, once upon a time? John was well and well out of the way. The Big Apple, the BVI, the Sidney Opera House at noontide—even Afghanistan's primary NATO facility, courtesy his long-fingered arse of an elder brother. Sand, sand; he could see why John had taken on protective camouflage. The game had been furthered, fantastically. John was of course always at Baker Street and well enough.

Mycroft had told Sherlock so, repeatedly. Not that he'd asked all that often. Mycroft did like to exaggerate, didn't he?

However. The game had in fact been _ended_, most satisfactorily.

Excepting the coda. Of course.

Doubt was a deadly sin; should've been named high on the list. When it struck, it was swift and had John bolting up precipitously, suspending on one arm (damn! shoulder!) as he bounded out of bed. Sherlock might very well grow bored. With _waiting_. It would be just like him.

Doubt drained the bones—most unscientific—and left a man flatlining at the cellular level. His foreskin had abraded, he'd wanked _that _much, and what if John never felt an ounce or inkling of similar? Sherlock was known for his mad fancies—forgiven, too, mostly—but John. John. John complained of some of them, hadn't he?

For the love of all that was holy, please let the count have been worthwhile.

Creak. Turn, palm slipping on sweat collecting unregarded. Floorboards stomped on by rushing bare feet and still-stupidly-booted ones and the rasp of hinges and thump of the elderly knob banging a hole right through the skin of plaster aged sufficient to be like concrete, like John's jaw.

For all that, it was hushed. Their first meeting. Sherlock could stop time; John was become a spider, worse than Moriarty ever had been. Common wolf, of course, but still. Scary monsters.

"Oh, god. Oh god, John!"

"You bleeding _bastard_."

Fin.


End file.
